


Untied

by InkFire_Scribe



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Anger, Dysfunctional Family, Grief, Hurt, Pain, blame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-19 14:43:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22979344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkFire_Scribe/pseuds/InkFire_Scribe
Summary: Inspired by the song "Burn" from Hamilton, Thranduil's wife is done with her husband's crap, and Legolas is the one that suffers. Oneshot, no happy ending. (Not in this fic, anyway.)
Relationships: Thranduil/Thranduil's Wife
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Untied

She sat at her desk, tall and slight, her appearance dominated by the cascade of deep amber-gold hair that covered most of her back. Her face was plain by elven standards, but Legolas thought her beautiful with her large, expressive brown eyes and pale complexion. She was a fey thing, though, and preferred the company of the trees and the elk to the royal court of Thranduil. 

She was upset. Legolas knew that as soon as he poked his head through the curtain into her personal chambers. For one thing, she'd closed the curtain. It wasn't very unusual in recent days, but it was a change from the open and inviting mother he'd known when he was younger. She was isolating herself, and it made him sad to know she felt like she needed to do that, pulling away even from him. He wasn't yet so old that he had no attachment to his mother, nor was he yet so young that he needed to be with her all the time.

It was a change, and he didn't like it. 

"Mother?" 

The elleth jerked in surprise, and a sheet of paper fluttered to the hearth. It caught fire, but rather than snatching it up or putting it out, she just looked at it, shaking her head a little. 

"Mother, is something wrong?" Legolas stepped into the room, noting the curtains drawn over the window and the scent of bruised greenery in the air. Plants usually throve in his mother's presence, and she cared for them as tenderly as she had for Legolas himself, but today each fern and flower in his mother’s bower looked as though it hadn't seen the sun nor rain in days. 

A pregnant pause followed, then she turned to look at him, and Legolas was shocked to see the tears on her cheeks, the redness of her eyes, and the tightness of her mouth. "Upset" didn't encompass what she was, and Legolas immediately felt that whoever had caused his mother such pain deserved pain in kind. 

"What happened? Who hurt you like this?" He stepped nearer to her, reaching for her shoulder, comforted by her allowance and yet enraged when she tensed under his hand. He might have been young, but there was no way to mistake the wrongness of this situation. Again, she didn't answer immediately, but looked down at the papers strewn on her desk. The one that had fallen was powdery ash on the hearth. With a start, he realized there were more in the fire, bits of ash that had once been pages. Even as he watched, she threw two more into the flames and watched as they were consumed. 

"I saved every letter. Every note. Every line. Every word. I held them close to my heart and I cherished them," she whispered, and Legolas wondered if she was talking to him or to herself. "I kept them all because I loved him. But that man doesn't exist anymore. He's abandoned me and everyone for the company of his own ego, and there's nothing I can say to get through to him." 

"Mother... you must be mistaken. Father wouldn't do that. Not to you. Not to us." But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. 

The Elvenking, tall and statuesque on the dais, his expression so icy it seemed nearly to lower the temperature in the room. The noble before him, hands clasped, pleading. He'd made a mistake, that was all. He'd been hard-pressed for results and had made bad choices. He had implicated people he hadn't known were innocent. A swish of fabric. The full tones of authority, ringing like bells in every word. The dismissal of an elf who'd only tried to do his best, and failed. 

Legolas shook away the memory, but felt the impact of it all the same, sinking into his consciousness like the weight of a heavy stone pressing down on his heart. He knew what his mother meant, and he disliked the truth in it. 

"I won't be tied to him any longer." More pages fell into the fire. She was putting them in faster now, her tears dry, her eyes red and angry. "They have no right to break me like this. No right to know what I said or where I was." 

Legolas didn't understand, and had the unpleasant creeping notion that he didn't want to know what she meant, what his father had done. 

The last of the papers fluttered into the fire, borne up by the heat before it fell like a struck bird, resting on the embers before it blackened, curled, and crumbled into ash. The elleth stood, her hair swirling about her like a cloak in a winter breeze. 

"Come with me, my son." Her hands, small and pale, clasped his, and Legolas had the briefest of visions - his own tiny hand in hers, looking up into her laughing face as they explored the Greenwood, peeking into thickets and sneaking up on grazing rabbits. It was gone almost as soon as it had come, but the impression it left on him was one of warmth and love. This woman that stood in front of him wasn't what she had been, any more than the icy sculpture of his father was not the king or father he had once been proud of. 

Slowly, he shook his head. "I need to speak with Father. I need to know what happened. If you won't tell me, he must. He can make it better." It was a fragile hope at best. Reasoning with the Elvenking... one was more likely to reason with the elk. 

His mother's hands sprang apart as though his skin had burned her, her dark eyes smoldering. Not for his sake, though. Not at him. 

"He can sit in his palace and rot. But you, my son... my lassë bîn. You deserve better." She looked at him with genuine longing, and Legolas felt the sinking premonition of parting. This was a goodbye, and if he didn't do something about it right now, it would be much more permanent than any goodbye should ever be. 

"Amal, please... don't do anything rash." He reached for her hand again, but she was pulling away, withdrawing into herself. A sudden gust of wind blew the curtains open and they flapped like enormous wings. Like some great beast coming to take her away from him. And in the blink of an eye, there she was. Young she may not have been, but the strength of the Eldar was in her, and she moved with the grace and litheness of an elleth new-come into her own. She crouched on the sill, looking down into the courtyard below. Her quarters weren't far from the ground. Being above all else made her feel like she was kept in a tower, instead of safe in a home she could call her own. 

"Take care of yourself, Legolas," she whispered. "Come find me, someday. When you're ready." 

Just like that, she left him. He rushed to the window to glimpse her golden hair streaming in the growing storm, but in seconds she had reached the ground, breezed past the guards on pale, bare feet, and disappeared into the trees while those she left behind were still wondering what had happened. 

Fury boiled in his gut. His mother had left him. She had disappeared and he hadn't gone with her. And it was all his father's fault. 

Storming into the throne room as the clouds outside burst, shedding their stored rain and wind on the forest below, Legolas roared out his father's name. Thranduil, startled and unprepared, leapt to his feet with the guilty expression of a schoolboy caught making mud pies when he ought to have been doing his maths. 

"What did you do to her?" Legolas demanded, springing up the steps of the dais while the guard were still scrambling to stop him. "What did you DO?"

The king scowled, beginning to recover from the shock of being addressed like a cadet fresh out of his first training run. "What are you talking about? Is this any way for a prince to behave?" 

It was enough to make Legolas wild with anger. In a flash he'd drawn his hunting knife, but before he could so much as gesture threateningly with it, the guards caught him by the arms and hauled him back, identical looks of panic in their eyes. Dark eyes, like his mother's. 

"She's gone!" Legolas struggled against the tight grip of the guards, but could no more free himself than he could fly. "She's gone, and it's all your fault! I don't know what you did, but it's your fault!" 

Thranduil went as still as a tree, rooted to the floor, his exquisite green robes pooling about his feet in ripples of rich fabric. He was a pillar of luxury, and it gave Legolas the utmost satisfaction to see naked alarm on his father's face. 

"She? Your mother?" 

"Who else?" snapped the prince, again trying to jerk his arms free. "You've lost her, and there's nothing you can do to get her back. No one can reach her now." 

Piercing blue eyes widened in the Elvenking's face, pupils dilating with fear. In a moment, he was running, hair and robes streaming, long legs opening in a wide, distance-eating stride he hadn't seen fit to use in close to an age. And as the Elvenking disappeared, the guards relaxed, releasing their prince with muttered apologies.

Legolas didn't follow his father. He knew what the king would find in his mother's bower. A fire on the hearth, an empty desk, and an open window. The smell of green things wilting swept about the room with the spice of fresh rain and the tang of lightning. She was gone. 

And someday, Legolas would follow her. 

But only once he was ready.


End file.
